Frozen numb
by Arasinyah
Summary: He wasn't very good, Loki decided, at being Aesir and he was even worse at being Jotunn. Might as well try being human then.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer:I don't own anything except Mrs Renault.**

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_Frozen Numb_

_Chapter 1_

Loki walked into his building with barely slumped shoulders. He took off his coat in the elevator cab and pressed a button absently leaning against the side. Just as the doors closed, Mrs Renault from downstairs appeared and he pressed a button to stave off its closing doors. She stepped in with a smile and a cane.

"Thank you young man."

"It's no problem at all." He replied with a smile.

"Haven't seen you in a while."

"My experiment at the university had me observing planets late at night. This is the first time I'll be sleeping in my bed in a week." He sighed and she chuckled.

"Oh I'm sure it's fine, you're young you must be used to late nights." She said in an innuendo laden voice.

Loki smiled even if for a different reason than she thought. He was older than her by far, older than most things in this world. There might be a tree or two that might have outlasted him but he wasn't sure of that.

"No late nights for me anymore. I'm a creature of habit I'm afraid and this change in my schedule is…distressing."

Before she could respond the doors opened with a ding and she got off after eliciting a promise from him to take care of himself. Once she was gone he went back to leaning his head against the wall and waited. Before long he was walking out and unlocking his own door. The multiple locks took some time but he made quick work of them his body working on autopilot, exhaustion etched into his face and he was in his home within seconds.

All hints of emotion dropped from his face. He stood taller now and absently set about making his dinner, a little dish of pesto pasta and sat on the tiny table and ate.

When imitating niceties had become habit he didn't quite know but it was worth it to take the slight trouble and avoid unnecessary problems later when his neighbours thought him to be a sociopath and called the police.

He wasn't a sociopath he was just numb.

He leaned back in his chair and observed his surroundings. The dotted cream wallpaper that looked almost brown with dullness especially in the pale yellow light form the fixtures, peeling at the corner to reveal bricks. Second hand fridge that didn't cool anything much in a kitchenette that he had to duck his head to enter.

He sat on the only chair in his house, the worn sofa standing in front of a small TV that only received News channels and served as his bed on most nights when he couldn't be bothered to move to the mattress in his bedroom.

His room in Asgard was beyond luxury in comparison but then so was his prison cell. And yet this little space was where he'd felt most free in the past centuries, when he felt anything at all. It was rare but occasionally he did feel that slight spark indicating emotion.

It never lasted for long.


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer:I don't own anything except Mrs Renault and Ariel.**

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_Frozen Numb_

_Chapter 2  
_

He ran into Mrs Renault again. He used to be surprised by how often he would run into her in the beginning but it didn't take long for him to realise it was because she was the only person in the building who was retired. The other tenants, like him, were mindless drones lost to the rat race, he out of choice, and them out of necessity. In some ways this world was harder than the one on Asgard. Every day was a fight of some kind, if only to survive. On Asgard there were series of battles punctuated by feasts. Some lived for those feasts; others like him lived for the battles.

Part of him wondered why he wasn't quite unable to stop comparing his homes like that. Most of him didn't care.

"Lucas! Fancy running into you here!" Mrs Renault was always happy whenever they met but she was never this exuberant.

"I was just on my way out actually. Running low on groceries." He chit chatted. The elevator was out of commission again and he was taking the stairs down when she had appeared on the landing.

"I'm waiting for my granddaughter, she said she's on her way up but the doorbell isn't working." She said informatively the happy twinkle never leaving her eyes. He would have been envious if he thought himself capable of feeling anything. "I meant to tell you that she'll be house-sitting for me while I'm going to visit my son in Arizona but it slipped my mind."

A girl walked up the stairs with heavy footsteps and stopped right in front of the two on the landing. She had the same hooded eyes that Mrs Renault did but in a grey reminiscent of clouds rather than the bright mossy green that her grandmother, as he assumed Mrs Renault to be, possessed. He noticed the rest of her as well, short bobbed black hair and a small mouth on a tiny deer like face but he kept on returning to the eyes.

They were dead, not unlike his own.

The two stared at one another and a brief look of recognition passed on both their faces. A kindred soul in pretence. He didn't know what her story was but he knew instantly that this girl put up a facade, the same as he, that she could feel and that she belonged to normality.

"Do you two know each other?" Rs Renault asked.

"I believe I've seen her around the university campus." He hadn't but the university was a convenient excuse. You could always find someone who looked familiar there.

"I don't go to college but I actually thought I saw you at a gig somewhere. It's easy to confuse people in crowded places." She smiled candidly and he was fascinated by how deep her act went. He would have been fooled if he hadn't spent many an hour practising that exact same smile in the mirror.

"Oh right, Lucas this is my granddaughter Ariel, Ariel this is Lucas he lives just upstairs."

"Ariel Summer." She offered her hand for a shake and he accepted.

"Lucas Ackerman."

Ariel looked at him with a curious smile. "You won't be too noisy an upstairs neighbour, I hope? No wild parties or dance sessions."

She was teasing him. They both knew that he would do no such thing, the hollow shell of a person that he was.

"I hope you won't make me want to rip my ears off by playing bad music which consists only of basses being dropped." He assumed the reference was correct he had overheard his students talking about it only last week.

"Only once a week." Mrs Renault looked between the two as if imagining he sparks flying and he inwardly smiled. The thought of two people incapable of feeling trying to 'make it work', as the phrase went, was laughable.

"Well I'll be going now. You both play nice."

"I'll walk you down." The girl, Ariel threw her bag in quickly before picking up Mrs Renault's duffle bag and they began the walk down slowly, Loki following close behind. Within minutes they stood on the curb watching as the cab carrying Mrs Renault sped away but the girl's smile remained.

"Still keeping up the act?" He asked conversationally and she raised an eyebrow.

"You're new at this aren't you?" No one mentioned what 'this' was but they both knew.

"Does four years count as new?"

Midgardian scale of time was different but from what he understood of it four years was a relatively long enough time. People at the university certainly seemed to think so.

"Yes." She laughed, a fake sound but well honed to sound real. "Don't worry, you'll get there eventually."

"Where?"

"The place when it becomes habit to the point where you start smiling to yourself even when you don't need to."

Loki stilled. He'd always thought it would work the other way round. Eventually the sparks of emotion would turn to a blazing fire and he would feel again. Patience was all it needed, he'd figured and he had years, centuries for them to build up, that he would feel again even if it was only paltry human emotions.

She gave him an indulgent smile and left him there on the curb with his thoughts. He began walking soon though, he really did need to buy groceries.

Still, he thought with an almost smile as he felt stirrings of what some might call relief, it was nice to know he wasn't alone in his numbness.


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer:I don't own anything except Mrs Renault and Ariel.**

* * *

_Frozen Numb_

_Chapter 3  
_

Loki woke up with a start, dreams of the chitauri haunting him. He turned to his side to see the clock read a time that was two hours before the time when his alarm would ring. He sighed and settled onto his back, counting the speckles on the ceiling after mentally congratulating himself on sleeping on the mattress and not the couch for once.

Reason to be a human number 153, they didn't fall off a bifrost and become the whipping boy of aliens. Well as far as he knew anyway, the curiosity that humans felt meant that they might have come across the chitauri after all.

He closed his eyes and reminded himself that it was 'the curiosity _we_ felt' not humans, for all intents and purposes he was human. 'I am human, I am human' he chanted over and over again until he believed it. Loki who? He was Lucas Ackerman, Assistant Professor in the department of astronomy at Columbia University not a God from another realm in which he was once king.

By the time his alarm rang he was fully immersed in his simulation.

It didn't take him long to get ready for work. A few years ago it would have taken him mere seconds, he would just snap his fingers and be ready but that was out of question now. Instead he took his time to brush his teeth, shaving carefully so he wouldn't cut himself and making sure his hair wasn't as messy as it could sometimes get.

Fifteen minutes was all it took and then he was off into the world as a young professor wannabe. On his way down he came across Ariel, his comrade in unfeeling and with the exchange of fake smiles they both parted ways at the base of the building stoop.

The saddleback leather briefcase given to him by a student he had tutored last year slung across his front, he practically hopped his way into the subway train and found himself a seat. It picked up speed and soon he was on his way to work.

An old man hobbled in just as the train got crowded enough that no seats were available. He still looked around for an empty seat with vacant eyes, one hand raised just a bit yet somehow completely limp like it was stuck like that. Loki got up and offered his seat with a small smile that was returned. The grateful look on the old man's face was genuine and Loki found himself being envious for one second.

One hand tucked over his bag and the other wound around a handle he looked around, people watching one of the few things he could do. To his left he saw a teenager with neon buds tucked into his ears and behind him the massive form of Captain America sans costume and a jolt of fear passed through him but all he got was a small smile from the superhero.

Loki was shocked to realise that The Soldier hadn't recognised who he was. Quietly he marvelled at this before realising he'd called him The Soldier. He wasn't The Soldier, he was Steve Rogers, only Loki called him The Soldier, not Lucas. Not that Lucas was supposed to know that this man was Captain America or that he was normally known as Steve Rogers. So he supposed it wasn't even Steve Rogers, just Random Blonde Man on The Subway.

He stared at the face reflected in the grimy glass of the subway window. Neatly maintained scruff, slightly curly blonde hair from the packet and gold rimmed spectacles placed just so that they were slightly askew. He supposed there really was no reason for The Sol- for this man on the subway to think him to be an alien previously hell bent on taking over the world.

If it wasn't for the fact that he knew this man to be Steve Rogers, a man who tried as hard as he did to be a normal human, he would almost take solace in the fact that he had him convinced.


End file.
